Report
The Digital Transformation Roadmap Toolkit serves as a strategic guide designed to help African Science Granting Councils (SGCs) develop, implement, and maintain effective digital data management systems. It was developed…
The Digital Transformation Roadmap Toolkit serves as a strategic guide designed to help African Science Granting Councils (SGCs) develop, implement, and maintain effective digital data management systems. It was developed as part of the Evi-Pol project under the SGCI.
Evi-Pol is led by the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) in Kenya in partnership with the Centre for Science, Technology and Innovation Indicators (CeSTII) of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in South Africa and Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (UCAD) in Senegal
Digital transformation support
Overview
The guide provides a step-by-step digital transformation roadmap for African SGCs. It emphasises co-creation, local consultancy, and flexibility in implementation. The toolkits also support councils in designing data management systems aligned with their mandates.
The document consists of three interrelated toolkits:
- Digital Transformation Roadmap
- Data Governance Toolkit
- Guide to Data Curation
Target audience for the toolkit
The guide is made for SGCs in Africa, especially those with limited digital capacity and resources. Each council can adapt the roadmap based on its own digital maturity and context.
The levels of digital capability are:
- No systems
- Partial systems
- Full digital systems.
What the roadmap includes
The roadmap emphasises people-centric, data-driven, agile, collaborative, and innovative principles.
It covers six core milestones:
- Readiness assessment
- Strategy development
- Infrastructure investment
- Staff training
- System implementation
- Evaluation
There are several guidance steps within the roadmap, with templates to complete. These include:
- Digital maturity assessment
- Defining clear digital transformation goals
- Review of existing technology and areas for improvement
- Developing custom roadmap with timelines and priorities
- Defining metrics for success
- Change management and stakeholder engagement planning
Core principles
It stresses the importance of a robust data governance framework for secure and efficient data use. It also promotes investment in scalable, interoperable, secure, and future-proof digital infrastructure. The roadmap includes practical and scalable recommendations to achieve digital transformation.
Summary
The toolkit is a comprehensive, user-driven guide to help SGCs modernise their data systems through digital technologies. It provides actionable steps and tools to ensure meaningful, lasting transformation.
Themes
The SGCI aims to strengthen the capacities of these SGCs to support research and evidence-based policies that will contribute to economic and social development.
